Credit cards, which are devices most commonly represented by a plastic card-like member through the use of which an authorized user pays for, by way of example, services and/or merchandise and the like, have become so universally well known and ubiquitous as to have fundamentally changed the very manner in which financial transactions and dealings are viewed and conducted in society today. Such credit cards are generally issued by a bank and provide a mechanism by which a user purchases goods without an immediate, direct exchange of cash and thereby incurs debt which the user may thereafter (i.e. upon receipt of a monthly or otherwise periodic statement) either pay the outstanding balance or, as a matter of choice, defer the balance for later payment with accompanying interest or finance charges for the period during which payment of the debt is deferred.
Increasingly, credit cards are being issued by banks and the like in association with another organization such, for example, as commercial enterprises which themselves offer or sell goods and/or services. This phenomenon, known as co-branding, provides a credit card that typically carries the name of a commercial company, with the commercial company or co-branding “partner” bringing to the card holder or user added benefits which, not incidentally, assist the partner in the sale of its goods or services to the card user. Well known and successful examples of such co-branded cards include the General Motors MasterCard credit card—offering users up to a five-percent rebate on user-purchased General Motors automobiles, based on the volume of charges placed on the user's card—and airline-partnered credit cards which award the card user frequent flyer mileage on the basis of user-accrued card charges.
Current co-branded credit cards, although successful, may nevertheless lack additional actual or perceived advantages, to the user and/or to the issuer and/or commercial partner, which may perhaps otherwise be available or attainable. For example, the rapid proliferation of co-branded cards offering seemingly ever-increasing amounts or levels of user-earned “benefits” encourages individual users or subscribers to obtain multiple credit cards, by which users often correspondingly split or divide their purchases and transactions—previously charged on a single card—between a number of cards, thereby decreasing the transaction volume of each card at the expense of one or more others. Moreover, permitting users to earn awards based on purchases encourages users to incur increasing amounts of debt, at times exceeding the amount that a user is reasonably capable of repaying in a timely manner, increasing the possibility of user default with consequent damage to the bank, to the commercial partner, and/or to the organization whose goods or services were charged in the user's transactions with the card.
Accordingly, it is the principle of the invention to provide methods for enhancing the value of a substantially conventional credit card so as to enhance a user's or potential user's perception of the desirability of holding or subscribing to the card and encourage increased use of the card for its normal utility as a payment device, all without the disadvantages of the prior art.